TESL Reporter 43, (1) pp.

15-30 15

The Structural Syllabus: The Golden-Egg-

Laying Goose That Should Not Be Killed
Sasan Bleghizadeh
Shahid Beheshti University, G.C.

The structural syllabus has served materials writers and language teachers for a long
time. Since the inception of the audio-lingual method in the 1950s, it has formed the
backbone of many popular and widely used textbooks such as English 900 (English
Language Services, 1964) and Lado English Series (Lado, 1977). In this type of syllabus,
grammatical items, graded from easy to difficult, are the point of departure for designing
language courses (Nunan, 1988, 2001a; White, 1988). Thus, the structural syllabus is one
which attributes a high priority to grammatical features and views “the structure of
language teaching as being principally provided by an ordered sequence of grammatical
categories” (Wilkins, 1981, p. 83). In practical terms, the structural syllabus is an
immediate solution to an important problem that most language teaching professionals
are preoccupied with, which is seeking the most appropriate unit of analysis for syllabus
design (Breen, 2001; Long & Crookes, 1992, 1993).
Although popular in the 1960s and then criticized in the 1970s and 1980s, the
structural syllabus is a golden-egg-laying goose that should not be killed. As argued by
Ellis (2002b), such a syllabus ensures a systematic coverage of the grammar of the target
language to be taught and provides both teachers and learners with a sense of achievement
and satisfaction.
Below we shall look at the major criticisms from both sociolinguistic and
psycholinguistic fronts raised against the structural syllabus. This is followed by a practical
suggestion for its improvement through the task-supported structural syllabus (TSSS).

The Sociolinguistic Front

In the 1970s, language teaching scholars realized that there is more to language
learning than simply mastering grammatical forms. They observed that students who had
learned a second or foreign language such as English through purely grammatically
centered materials were capable of producing well-formed sentences. However, they were
drastically incapable of communicating effectively in real-life settings. As Widdowson
(1979) rightly comments:
The ability to compose sentences is not the only ability we need to communicate.
Communication only takes place when we make use of sentences to perform a
variety of different acts of an essentially social nature. Thus we do not
16 TESL Reporter

communicate by composing sentences, but by using sentences to make

statements of different kinds, to describe, to record, to classify and so on.
(p. 118)
It follows from the above argument that to be able to communicate naturally, students
ought to be aware of the communicative value of the grammatical elements that they study.
In other words, they should know how to use a grammatical form rather simply study its
usage (Widdowson, 1978). For example, a teacher is focusing on grammatical usage when
she teaches present progressive by saying that it is formed by adding am/is/are to the -ing
form of a verb through well-known classroom examples like I am writing on the
blackboard and She is writing on the blackboard. However, the teacher is teaching use
when she concentrates on the communicative acts performed by this tense, such as
descriptions, as in My daughter is standing next to John. She is wearing a white dress.
Therefore, it is argued that taking care of use is as important as, if not more important
than, taking care of usage.
Quite similarly, a distinction has been drawn between two dimensions of language
proficiency: cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) and basic interpersonal
communicative skills (BICS) (Cummins, 1980). BICS refers to one s ability to
communicate successfully in various social contexts. It is obvious that the main
shortcoming of the structural syllabus, from a sociolinguistic perspective, is that it merely
caters for CALP and takes no heed of BICS. Hence, as Wilkins (1979) genuinely contends,
“The grammatical syllabus fails to provide the necessary conditions for the acquisition of
communicative competence” (p. 83). That is, it does not equip students with the capacity
to know how to use language appropriately and know how to use and react to various
speech acts such as requests, apologies, and complaints (Richards, Platt, & Platt, 1992).

The Psycholinguistic Front

The second major criticism launched against the structural syllabus is concerned with
how individuals acquire a second language and therefore has a psycholinguistic rationale.
More often than not, the structural syllabus has been implemented through the well-
established PPP methodology, which advocates three stages: presentation, practice, and
production (Shehadeh, 2005; Skehan, 1998; Willis, 1996). The presentation stage focuses
on a new grammatical item, often contextualized, and introduces it to students. The
practice stage gives students an opportunity to automatize the newly presented structure
through intensive drilling and controlled practice. Finally, at the production stage, students
are encouraged to produce the target structure more freely and spontaneously through
communicative activities. However, recent second language acquisition (SLA) research
has shown that this is not the way language learning takes shape. Therefore, it is wrong
to assume that students will learn language in the same order in which it was taught. As
Skehan (1996) observes:
 Bleghizadeh—The Structural Syllabus 17

The belief that a precise focus on a particular form leads to learning and
automatization no longer carries much credibility in linguistics or psychology.
Instead, the contemporary view of language development is that learning is
constrained by internal processes. Learners do not simply acquire the language
to which they are exposed, however carefully that exposure may be orchestrated
by the teacher. It is not simply a matter of converting input into output. (p.18)
The linear approach to language acquisition posits that students cannot and, of course,
should not work on a new grammatical item unless they have completely mastered the one
preceding it. For example, students should first master conditional type I before being
introduced to type conditional type II. This issue is illustrated by Nunan’s (2001b)
metaphorical example. According to Nunan, learning a new language is like constructing
a wall, the building blocks of which are grammatical units functioning as bricks. The easy
grammatical bricks should be placed at the bottom in order to provide a foundation for the
more difficult ones. The task for the language learners is to get the linguistic bricks in the
right order: first the word bricks, and then the sentence bricks. If the bricks are not in the
correct order, the wall will collapse under its own ungrammaticality (Nunan, 2001b).
Thus, contrary to this picture, learners do not learn a new language in this step-by-
step fashion. Rather, they demonstrate a U-shaped behavior (Kellerman, 1985). A typical
example of this U-shaped behavior, experienced by most EFL/ESL teachers, occurs when
learners apparently master irregular past-tense morphology (e.g., went, wrote, came) and
then proceed to confuse them with regular past forms, the result of which is the production
of wrong forms (e.g., goed, writed, comed).
Hence, dissatisfied with the brick laying metaphor, most SLA researchers have
abandoned it in favor of an organic metaphor (Nunan, 2001b; Rutherford, 1987). This
metaphor views second language acquisition more like growing a garden than building a
wall (Nunan, 2001b). In this garden, some linguistic flowers appear at the same time, but
they do not grow at the same rate. This is exactly similar to how interlanguage develops.
One might learn several items concurrently, though imperfectly, yet the rate of mastery for
each item is different. This rate, however, is determined by a complex interaction of
several factors which are beyond the scope of this paper. The important thing to remember
is that second language acquisition does not follow a discrete-point fashion: one does not
first learn Rule A perfectly and then proceed to Rule B.

Grammar and Grammar Teaching

The two preceding major criticisms, coupled with a number of other minor objections,
persuaded language teaching experts that grammatical items cannot be a suitable unit of
analysis for designing instructional materials. Some, who were disillusioned with certain
methods and approaches such as audiolingualism or situational language teaching, adopted
18 TESL Reporter

an anti-grammarian stance and argued in favor of grammarless classes (Krashen & Terrell,
1983; Prabhu, 1987).
A closer examination of the criticisms leveled against the structural syllabus reveals
that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with grammatical rules functioning as the
building blocks of language teaching materials. Although, as mentioned earlier, learners
pass through certain developmental sequences governed by the interlanguage route,
formal grammar instruction is likely to help them process the target structure if it
coincides with their requisite developmental stage (Lightbown, 2000; Pienemann, 1984,
1999). The fact that language learners cannot use grammatical forms for communicative
purposes may imply that they have not received adequate formal instruction. Likewise,
the fact that second language acquisition is not orchestrated by mastery of one
grammatical item followed by another does not suggest that grammar teaching should be
expelled from language syllabuses and textbooks. As Ellis (2006) puts it, there is now
convincing indirect and direct evidence, some of which will be examined below, to
support the teaching of grammar.
The first argument for teaching grammar comes from immersion programs in Canada.
In recent years, many Anglophone students have received their education through French.
These students have been exposed to a lot of meaning-focused input in French and their
progress has been carefully studied. The results of these studies (e.g., Swain, 1985; Swain
& Lapkin, 1995) indicate that although the majority of these students have achieved
native-like comprehension skills, their productive skills are still far from native-like norms,
suggesting that meaning-focused instruction devoid of any grammar teaching is likely to
result in fossilization.
Another argument to support grammar instruction comes from Ellis (2002b), who
maintains that, for adult learners, grammar is the central component of language and adults
make strenuous efforts to understand it. As he further puts it:
In an analysis of the diaries written by abinitio learners of German in an intensive
foreign language course at a university in London, I was struck by the depth of
the learners concern to make sense of the grammar of German. Their diaries are
full of references to their struggle to understand particular rules of grammar and
their sense of achievement when a rule finally clicked. It should be noted, too,
that grammar for these learners consisted of explicit rules that they could
understand; it was not the kind of implicit grammar that comprises interlanguage.
(p. 20)
Ellis, of course, rightly warns us that not all learners are interested in studying
grammar, as some younger learners might be more inclined to study language functionally.
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that grammar is an invaluable asset to adults,
particularly those with an analytic learning style.
 Bleghizadeh—The Structural Syllabus 19

Finally, a very recent argument in favor of the importance of grammar teaching comes
from Cullen (2008). Building on Widdowson’s (1990) conception of grammar as a
liberating force, Cullen argues that “without any grammar, the learner is forced to rely
exclusively on lexis and the immediate context, combined with gestures, intonation and
other prosodic and non-verbal features, to communicate his/her intended meaning” (p. 1).
For instance, the three lexical items dog, chase, and cat can be combined in a variety of
ways to signal different meanings such as: a) The dog is chasing the cat, b) The dog chased
the cat, c) The dog has chased the cat, and d) A dog must have chased the cat. It is grammar
and grammar alone that helps us see the distinction in these sentences through the use of
articles, number, tense, and aspect. “[It] generally enables us to communicate with a degree
of precision not available to the learner with only a minimal command of the system. In
this sense, grammar is a liberating force” (Cullen, 2008, p. 222).
Based on the above justifications and many more that can be found elsewhere (see
Ellis, 2006; Thornbury, 1999), it can be safely argued that grammar cannot and should not
be sacrificed in language classes.

The Poststructural Syllabuses

The last three decades have witnessed a number of attempts to find a substitute for
the structural syllabus. For a long time, syllabus designers experimented with other units
of analysis such as situations, functions, notions, topics, and lexis. Nevertheless, these
units of analysis were not without their critics (Long & Crookes, 1992; Long & Robinson,
1998; White, 1988), and in many cases proved to share the same faults previously found
with the structural syllabus.
At last, attracted by the innovations in the Bangalore project (Prabhu, 1987), a number
of scholars voted for the (pedagogic) task as an effective unit of analysis for designing
language courses (Ellis, 2003; Long & Crookes, 1992, 1993; Nunan, 2004; Skehan, 1996,
1998, 2003).
But what is a task? According to Nunan (2004), a pedagogic task, i.e. one which
requires learners to do things they are unlikely to do outside the classroom, is defined as
follows:
A piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending,
manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention
is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express
meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to
manipulate form. (p.4)
Implicit in the above definition is the fact that deployment of one’s grammatical
knowledge is an important element in successful completion of a task, “and that grammar
exists to enable the language user to express different communicative meanings”
20 TESL Reporter

(Nunan, 2004, p. 4). The interrelation between form and meaning while doing a task brings
us to the main point of this paper, the concept of a task-supported structural syllabus.
However, before addressing this issue, it is important to clearly define and illustrate a
number of tasks and activities which constitute the basic elements of the task-supported
structural syllabus.
The first activity refers to language or structural exercises. These exercises
explicitly draw learners’ attention to specific grammatical or lexical items
(Kumaravadivelu, 1993, p. 80). The following activity is a typical language exercise
from American Headway 2: Workbook by Soars and Soars (2001, p. 36). This exercise
requires learners to use their knowledge of present perfect tense and fill in the blanks
with for or since.

Activity 1

Complete the sentences with for or since.

1. I haven t seen Keith _____ a while.
2. He s been in China _____ January.
3. I have known them _____ many years.
4. He works for a company called KMP. He has worked for them _____ several years.
5. I m taking care of Tom today. He s been at my house _____ 8:00 this morning.

Next, there are communicative activities, which are often done in pairs or small
groups and require learners to manipulate one or more structures in a genuine
information exchange (Nunan, 2004). Communicative activities are similar to
language exercises in that they involve manipulation of a limited number of
grammatical items. However, they differ from language exercises in that they provide
learners with a choice and freedom of what to say. Seen in another light, language
exercises are tightly controlled and there is only one correct answer to each item or
question, while communicative activities could be handled in a variety of ways. In
the following communicative activity, learners work in pairs and make short
conversations using present perfect tense. The second student, however, has a choice
of answering with for or since.
 Bleghizadeh—The Structural Syllabus 21

Activity 2

Work with a partner. Make questions with how long and answers with for or since.

How long have you lived in Canada? I’ve lived here for two years

1. live in Canada
2. work as a nurse
3. have your car
4. live in this apartment
5. be a soccer fan

The next term to be elaborated on is consciousness-raising (CR), which is

defined as a deliberate attempt on the part of the teacher to make the learners
aware of specific features of the L2 (Ellis, 1993). According to Ellis (2002a), the
main characteristics of CR tasks are as follows. First, there is an attempt to
isolate a specific grammatical structure for focused attention. Second, the
learners are provided with data, which illustrate the target structure, and with an
explicit rule describing the feature. Third, the learners are supposed to utilize
intellectual effort to understand the target structure. Fourth, misunderstanding
of the target structure by the learners leads to clarification in the form of further
data, description, or explanation. And fifth, learners may be required, though it
is not necessary, to state the rule describing the target structure. CR tasks are
completely different from language exercises and communicative activities in
that they do not require learners to produce a given grammatical feature; rather,
they provide learners with an opportunity to discover how a grammatical rule
works (Ellis, 2002a, 2003).
The following CR task adapted from Ellis (2002a, p.173) is a typical activity
designed to make learners aware of the grammatical difference between the prepositions
for and since.
22 TESL Reporter

Activity 3

A consciousness-raising problem-solving task

1. Here is some information about when four people joined the company they now
work for and how long they have been working there.

Name Date Joined Length of Time

Amanda 1975 35 yrs

Bill 1990 20 yrs
Sue 2009 9 mths
Walter 2010 10 days

2. Study these sentences about these people. When is “for” used and when is “since”
used?
a. Amanda has been working for her company for most of her life.
b. Bill has been working for his company since 1990.
c. Sue has been working for her company for 9 months.
d. Walter has been working for his company since February.
3. Which of the following sentences are ungrammatical? Why?
a. Amanda has been working for her company for 1975.
b. Bill has been working for his company for 20 years.
c. Sue has been working for her company since 2009.
d. Walter has been working for his company since 10 days.
4. Try and make up a rule to explain when “for” and “since” are used.
5. Make up one sentence about when you started to learn English and one sentence
about how long you have been studying English. Use “for” and “since.”

Finally, there are focused and unfocused tasks. A focused task is an activity that is
designed to provide learners with an opportunity to use a specific grammatical structure
while communicating (Ellis, 2003, 2009; Nunan, 2004). An unfocused task, on the contrary,
is a task designed to prompt comprehension and production of language for the purpose of
communication without aiming at eliciting a particular grammatical feature (Ellis, 2003,
2009). Thus, the borderline between a focused and an unfocused task is that the former
involves production of a particular linguistic form, whereas the latter does not. The following
activity with fictitious names adapted from Focus on Grammar: An Intermediate Course for
Reference and Practice by Fuchs, Westheimer, and Bonner (1994, p.104) is a good sample
of a focused task. It requires learners to solve a problem—deciding whom to hire—and at
the same time produce sentences using present perfect tense with for and since.
 Bleghizadeh—The Structural Syllabus 23

Activity 4

A prestigious college is going to hire a new English professor. Look at these two
resumes. In small groups, decide who to hire and why. Use for and since in discussing their
qualifications. Here are some things to consider: years of teaching experience, number of
jobs, number and types of classes, awards, and number of published articles.
Examples:
A: Philip Long has had the same job since he got his Ph.D.
B: Rita Harmer has a lot of experience. She’s been a teacher since 2000.

Philip Long Rita Harmer

Education: Education:
2002 Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics 2000 Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics
(UCLA) (UCLA)

Teaching Experience: Teaching Experience:

2002- present UCLA 2008-present Temple University
2003-2007 Seattle University
Courses Taught: 2000-2002 UCLA
Syllabus design
Methodology Courses Taught:
CALL Second Language Acquisition
Academic Writing
Publications: Psycholinguistics
"Introducing Computers into the English
Class" (The Journal of Linguistics
Publications:
Applied, 2006)
"Incidental Vocabulary Learning"
(MJLS, 2001)
Awards:
"Collocations in SLA" (MJLS, 2006)
Distinguished Professor 2005
24 TESL Reporter

The following activity from Interchange: Intro (3rd edition) by Richards (2005,
p.55) is an example of an unfocused task where learners read four job profiles and do the
related tasks.

Activity 5

Read the following extracts. Which person has the most interesting job? Why?

Lisa Parker has two jobs. She works as a
waitress at night, but she’s really an ac-
tress. During the day, she auditions for
plays and television shows. Her schedule
is difficult, and she’s tired a lot. But she’s
following her dream.
Lots of teenagers want John Blue’s job.
He plays video games for eight hours a
day. And he gets paid for it! John is a
video game tester for a big video game
company. Is it ever boring? Never. John
almost always wins!

Becky Peck walks in the park every day
for many hours – rain or shine. Becky is a
professional dog walker. She walks dogs
for other people. Sometimes she takes 20
dogs to the park at one time!
Carlos Ruiz is a busy man. He plans
lessons, grades homework, helps with
after-school activities – and of course,
he teaches! His salary isn’t great, but
that’s OK. His students like his classes,
so he’s happy.

A. Read the article. Who says these things? Write your guesses.
1. After I win, I take a break.
2. I don t usually work in the summer.
3. The restaurant closes late around 2:00 AM.
4. After work, my feet and arms are tired!

B. Write a short description of a job, but don t write the name of the job. Then read it to
the class. Your classmates guess the job.

A Task-Supported Structural Syllabus

As mentioned earlier one of the serious problems associated with the structural
syllabus and its accompanying presentation-practice-production (PPP) methodology is
 Bleghizadeh—The Structural Syllabus 25

that it presents language piece by piece and takes grammatical items as point of departure
for materials development. However, it was previously argued that grammar is not
something to be dispensed with. Fortunately, there is no antipathy between grammar
teaching and task-based teaching and they can be easily integrated. This integration can
result in what I have called the task-supported structural syllabus (TSSS) after Ellis’s
(2003) coinage of task-supported language teaching. The idea of integrating grammar
teaching with pedagogic tasks is not a new one and has been around for a long time. In a
praiseworthy attempt to sort out misunderstandings about task-based language teaching,
Ellis (2009) has made a distinction between three syllabus types regarding this integration:
a pure task-based syllabus (consisting entirely of unfocused tasks), a grammar-oriented
task-based syllabus (consisting entirely of focused tasks), and a hybrid type (consisting of
a mixture of focused and unfocused tasks). One might, therefore, wonder how TSSS
differs from the grammar-oriented task-based syllabus or the hybrid type. The answer
given to this query is that in all the above syllabus types, the primary unit of analysis for
course design is the task, while grammatical items in TSSS still play a pivotal role. Hence,
each typical TSSS lesson centers on a target grammatical structure supported by various
task types (CR, focused, and unfocused). Figure 1 shows the major components of a
typical TSSS lesson.
We can see that each TSSS lesson starts with a presentation stage. Nevertheless, it is
totally different from that of PPP. The presentation stage in a TSSS lesson comes about
through a CR task rather than the teacher’s explicit teaching. This allows learners to

Figure 1
Major components of a task-supported structural lesson

Presentation of the Practice through Practice through

new structure meaning-focused communicative
through a CR task language exercises activities

Comprehension/ Production
Production through through focused
unfocused tasks tasks
26 TESL Reporter

discover the rules for themselves through the teacher’s support and supervision. Presen-
tation is followed by the practice stage where learners do both language exercises and
communicative activities. Traditional PPP methodology requires students to do commu-
nicative activities at the production stage, which, as discussed previously, was abortive.
The production stage in a typical TSSS lesson, however, requires students to do a focused
task through which they both focus on form and meaning. Finally, the lesson comes to an
end through an unfocused task in which students do a truly meaning-focused activity re-
gardless of whether the input they receive contains familiar or unfamiliar structures. This
unfocused task serves two purposes. The first is exposing students to previously taught
structures, hence recycling them. The second is holding new, unrehearsed structures be-
fore their eyes. Both of these purposes extricate the structural syllabus from the chronic
criticism of being purely linear. Moreover, doing unfocused tasks allows students to learn
numerous things simultaneously and imperfectly (Nunan, 2001b), which is in line with re-
cent models of second language acquisition.
The activities that shape a typical TSSS lesson are consistent with three interrelated
principles of effective grammar instruction recently proposed by Batstone and Ellis
(2009). The first is the Given-to-New Principle, where existing world knowledge should
be utilized as a resource for connecting known, i.e. given meaning with new form-function
mappings. The second is the Awareness Principle, which ensures the importance of
consciousness in language learning. And the third is the Real-Operating Conditions
Principle, which states that the process of acquiring form-function mappings will not be
complete unless learners are provided with an opportunity to practice them through
activities where there is primary focus on meaning, but form is not ignored. These three
principles, undoubtedly, are embodied in the activities which appear in Figure 1. The CR
task through which the new structures are presented to the learners reflects the Given-to-
New and Awareness Principles. Such tasks enable learners to use their existing knowledge
to identify the meaning(s) conveyed by a specific grammatical feature, helping them do
form-function mapping. Moreover, they allow learners to notice and understand the given
structure, hence ensuring the Awareness Principle. Meanwhile, the focused tasks ensure
the Real-Operating Conditions principle, as they allow learners to use the given structure
in a communicative context where there is attention to both meaning and form.

Conclusion
The arguments throughout this paper are aimed at providing a justifiable rationale
for improving the traditional form of the structural syllabus. To this end, the major
criticisms often sharpened against the structural syllabus were first reviewed. From a
sociolinguistic perspective, the structural syllabus has been traditionally condemned on the
grounds that it does not arm learners with the needed means for successful communication.
From a psycholinguistic perspective, it has been criticized for depicting a false picture of
 Bleghizadeh—The Structural Syllabus 27

second language acquisition, embodying a linear, step-by-step learning fashion. To solve

this problem, language teaching experts (e.g., Long & Crookes, 1992) suggested that
grammatical items, as the unit of syllabus design, receive minimal attention and be
replaced by tasks. Given the importance of grammar instruction in EFL settings, this paper
calls attention to a compromise between grammar teaching and task-based instruction. It
was contended that it is possible to moderate and modify the structural syllabus through
the use of tasks as an adjunct to structure-based teaching, and that it may be possible to
clothe structures through tasks (Skehan, 2003). The outcome would be the task-supported
structural syllabus in which grammatical structures are first presented through
consciousness-raising tasks, then practiced through meaning-focused language exercises
and communicative activities, and finally produced through focused tasks. The novelty of
TSSS lies in the fact that this chain is completed by an unfocused task with a twofold
aim: recycling the previously taught structures and introducing the new structures to be
taught later. This last episode extricates the structural syllabus from the often raised
problem of linearity.
Let us now see how this could be operationalized through a hypothetical lesson
designed to teach the difference between for and since to a group of elementary students
who have recently been taught the present perfect tense. At first, the teacher presents the
difference between for and since through a CR task (Activity 3), whereby the learners
have to discover for themselves what these two mean and how they should be used. Next
the learners are given a language exercise in which they have to fill in the given gaps with
for and since (Activity 1). This is followed by a communicative activity, done in pairs,
where the learners have more freedom in using these two forms (Activity 2). Then the
teacher asks the learners to do a focused task, whereby they naturally communicate and
solve a given problem, using for and since (Activity 4). Finally, the learners do an
unfocused task (Activity 5), where they do not have to use a specific target structure (for
and since in the case of this lesson). It should be noted that this last activity could be a
comprehension task, a production task, or both, thematically linked to previous activities
(in this case jobs). Thus, whatever form it takes, the goal of this episode is to provide
learners with an opportunity to receive further input (preferably authentic) which exposes
them to unrehearsed, uncontrived samples of language and allows them to freely
communicate in the class.

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28 TESL Reporter

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About the Author

Dr. Sasan Baleghizadeh is an Assistant Professor of TEFL at Shahid Beheshti
University, G.C. of Iran, where he teaches applied linguistics, syllabus design, and
materials development. He is also a member of the Research and Planning Department
at the Iran Language Institute. His recent publications have appeared in TESL Reporter
and ELT Journal. Email: sasanbaleghizadeh@yahoo.com